Abstract
The data produced by the scientific community impacts on academia, clinicians, and the general public; therefore, the scientific community and other regulatory bodies have been focussing on ethical codes of conduct. Despite the measures taken by several research councils, unethical research, publishing and/or reviewing behaviours still take place. This exploratory study considers some of the current unethical practices and the reasons behind them and explores the ways to discourage these within research and other professional disciplinary bodies. These interviews/discussions with PhD students, technicians, and academics/principal investigators (PIs) (N=110) were conducted mostly in European higher education institutions including UK, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Czech Republic and Netherlands.Through collegiate discussions, sharing experiences and by examining previously published/reported information, authors have identified several less reported behaviours. Some of these practices are mainly influenced either by the undue institutional expectations of research esteem or by changes in the journal review process. These malpractices can be divided in two categories relating to (a) methodological malpractices including data management, and (b) those that contravene publishing ethics. The former is mostly related to “committed bias”, by which the author selectively uses the data to suit their own hypothesis, methodological malpractice relates to selection of out-dated protocols that are not suited to the intended work. Although these are usually unintentional, incidences of intentional manipulations have been reported to authors of this study. For example, carrying out investigations without positive (or negative) controls; but including these from a previous study. Other methodological malpractices include unfair repetitions to gain statistical significance, or retrospective ethical approvals. In contrast, the publication related malpractices such as authorship malpractices, ethical clearance irregularities have also been reported. The findings also suggest a globalised approach with clear punitive measures for offenders is needed to tackle this problem.
Highlights
Scientific research depends on effectively planned, innovative investigation coupled with truthful, critically analysed reporting
Increasing demands on research esteem, coupled with the way this is captured/assessed, has created a relentless pressure to publish at all costs; this has resulted in several scientific misconduct (Rawat and Meena 2014)
In 2008, a survey amongst researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggested there might be as many as 1,000 cases of potential scientific misconduct going unreported each year (Titus et al 2008)
Summary
Scientific research depends on effectively planned, innovative investigation coupled with truthful, critically analysed reporting. Questionable research practices (QRP) have been exposed by whistle blowers within the scientific community and publicised by the media (Altman 2006; John et al 2012). Organisations such as the Centre for Scientific Integrity (CSI) concentrate on the transparency, integrity and reproducibility of published data, and promote best practices (www n.d.). These measures focus on “scholarly conduct” and promote ethical behaviour in research and the way it is reported/disseminated, yet the number of misconduct and/or QRP’s are on the rise. The World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) has identified the following as the most reported misconduct: fabrication, falsification, plagiarism/ghost writing, image/data manipulation, improprieties of authorship, misappropriation of the ideas of others, violation of local and international regulations (including animal/human rights and ethics), inappropriate/false reporting (i.e. wrongful whistle-blowing) (www n.d.)
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